At least two people are dead and dozens injured – including up to 10 with amputated limbs – after two bombs tore through the finish line of the Boston Marathon and another exploded near a Boston library, according to the Boston Police Department.

Authorities were guarding a person of interest at a local hospital, sources told FoxNews.com. The person had severe burns, but authorities had not determined whether the person was a victim or a perpetrator. The FBI, which was treating the bombing as a terrorist investigation, was analyzing video from several area surveillance cameras.

The simultaneous explosions just before 3 p.m., another blast several miles away more than an hour later, and reports of two other unexploded devices found near the scene raised suspicions of a terrorist attack. Authorities shut down cellular service in the area in order to prevent remote detonations. Intelligence officials told The Associated Press two unexploded devices were being dismantled, and a third explosion near the JFK Library in the Columbia Point section of Dorchester. Competitors and race organizers were crying as they fled the bloody chaos, while some witnesses reported seeing victims with lost limbs.

"Somebody's leg flew by my head," a spectator, who gave his name as John Ross, told the Boston Herald. “I gave my belt to stop the blood.”

The first two explosions occurred at 2:50 p.m. – nearly five hours after the marathon began – about 50 to 100 yards apart, according to Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis. The third explosion occurred several miles southeast of the marathon's finish line, at around 4:15 p.m. Police could not say if it was related to the earlier explosions.

Witnesses heard booms that sounded like two claps of thunder near the finish line inside the Fairmount Copley Plaza Hotel, according to multiple local reports. The horror unfolded as the city marked the 238th annual Patriot's Day, commemorating the anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord at the beginning of the Revolutionary War.

Video of the scene showed a number of emergency crews in the area tending to victims and blood on the ground near the finish line.

"I saw two explosions. The first one was beyond the finish line. I heard a loud bang and I saw smoke rising," Boston Herald reporter Chris Cassidy, who was running in the marathon, told the newspaper. "I kept running and I heard behind me a loud bang. It looked like it was in a trash can or something...There are people who have been hit with debris, people with bloody foreheads.”

"There are a lot of people down," said one man, whose bib No. 17528 identified him as Frank Deruyter of North Carolina. He was not injured, but marathon workers were carrying one woman, who did not appear to be a runner, to the medical area as blood gushed from her leg. A Boston police officer was wheeled from the course with a leg injury that was bleeding.

About three hours after the winners crossed the line, there was a loud explosion on the north side of Boylston Street, just before the photo bridge that marks the finish line. Another thunderous explosion could be heard a few seconds later.

Runner Laura McLean of Toronto said she heard two explosions outside the medical tent.

"There are people who are really, really bloody," McLean said. "They were pulling them into the medical tent."

Cherie Falgoust was waiting for her husband, who was running the race. "I was expecting my husband any minute," she said. "I don't know what this building is ... it just blew. Just a big bomb, a loud boom, and then glass everywhere. Something hit my head. I don't know what it was. I just ducked."

Authorities in New York, meanwhile, are deploying counter-terrorism vehicles around landmark sites in Manhattan, including prominent hotels, according to the New York City Police Department.

Nearly 25,000 people, including runners from around the world, competed in Boston's celebrated 26.2-mile race, attracting huge throngs of onlookers, especially near the finish line.

"This is a horrific day in Boston," Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick said in a statement. "My thoughts and prayers are with those who have been injured. I have been in touch with the President, Mayor [Thomas] Menino and our public safety leaders. Our focus is on making sure that the area around Copley Square is safe and secured. I am asking everyone to stay away from Copley Square and let the first responders do their jobs."

Also, another explosion shortly after at the JFK Library in Boston; police aren't saying for sure if it's linked but some news reports have done so. Too early to tell. Police say they have a suspect in custody with serious burns. I can't help but think that could be from a suicide bomber.

Also, another explosion shortly after at the JFK Library in Boston; police aren't saying for sure if it's linked but some news reports have done so. Too early to tell. Police say they have a suspect in custody with serious burns. I can't help but think that could be from a suicide bomber.

God Bless the victims.

I think they are saying now the JFK Library explosion was due to a fire there.

I hope they will be able to get the person(s) responsible for this quickly.

They just reported they've got the 2nd suspect, the younger brother, in custody.

It's ironic that this 19-yr old, the 2nd suspect, was granted American citizenship on September 11, 2012, the 11th anniversary of 9/11. This is the thanks America gets for opening her arms and granting this family asylum...we offer them a safe haven...and they hate us!

They just reported they've got the 2nd suspect, the younger brother, in custody.

It's ironic that this 19-yr old, the 2nd suspect, was granted American citizenship on September 11, 2012, the 11th anniversary of 9/11. This is the thanks America gets for opening her arms and granting this family asylum...we offer them a safe haven...and they hate us!

I really hope this spurs the right kind of immigration reform. We can't just let in every yahoo who claims they deserve to be here. We are being way too naive as a country with our policy of letting every sob story come in and live here with no real fear of deportation. So frustrating!!!

I really hope this spurs the right kind of immigration reform. We can't just let in every yahoo who claims they deserve to be here. We are being way too naive as a country with our policy of letting every sob story come in and live here with no real fear of deportation. So frustrating!!!

~Amy

I know, it is frustrating! They didn't read him his "miranda" rights so I'm hoping he will be charged with being an enemy combatant and tried as a terrorist. I just pray his new American citizenship DOES NOT benefit him in any legal way. Their family is spread out, some here, some in Canada, and none of them stepped forward and called the police once their pictures were released to the public.

One thing that was so fantastic to see was how every law agency there from federal to local worked TOGETHER, along with cooperation and help from their citizens, and the media, to get these murdering terrorists. Great job!

I can't help but think of Benghazi...zero terrorists captured and brought to justice. Boston...one terrorist dead, the other captured!

I'm sorry I'm late in replying to this thread...but ive had a difficult week.

I am slightly concerned that what appears to be a homegrown terror cell acted in such a calculatedly evil way, one assumes, without much help.

For example, the bombs that went off were not designed to kill people, they were designed to maim. They were filled with debris that was designed to fly at high velocity towards people and cut their limbs off.

Secondly, the fact that clearly this wasnt an attack on pureist athletes, because they specifically timed it so that rather then the bomb going off when the winners arrived, they waited until such a time as normal non-athletes who had trained, and probably ran for charity rather then sports timed finish arrived.

Thirdly, note carefully the placement of the two bombs relative to detonation. The first went off close to the finish line, pushing people AWAY from the finish line...the second bomb was further back, and anyone fleeing the first bomb, would have been heading in the direction of the second when it detonated

Thats NOT the Modus Operandi of a strange lunatic....its the Modus Operandi of a Compus Mentus killer who has spent a very long time thinking about how he is going to do this and which ways he can do it to maximize its effectiveness towards his personal goal.

I dont know about any other bombs in the city...but we did also hear that at least one senator and the President were sent mail that contained toxic substances this week...and of course, there was the destruction of a fertilizer plant somewhere in Texas I think which was so big in vertually destroyed the whole town it was placed next to...AND was geologically recognised on the Richter Scale that measures earth quakes.

They are still investigating and looking into the lives of these two brothers especially the older brother who might have been involved with a group, The Caucasus Emirate.

Quote:

The Caucasus Emirate (Chechen: Имарат Кавказ Imarat Kavkaz; Russian: Кавказский Эмират Kavkazskiy Emirat) also known as the Caucasian Emirate is a self-proclaimed virtual state entity,[1][2] partially successor to the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria and was officially announced on October 31, 2007 by former President of Ichkeria Dokka Umarov, who became the first Emir. Its military branch is the Caucasian Front organization. Both the Russian Federation and the United States have designated the Caucasus Emirate as a terrorist organisation.[3][4] The United States government has offered US$5 million for information leading to the capture of the group's leader Dokka Umarov.[4] On July 29, 2011 the United Nations Security Council Al-Qaeda and Taliban Sanctions Committee added the Caucasus Emirate to the list of entities associated with Al-Qaeda.

Our FBI supposedly looked into the older brother in 2011, even interviewed him, after a request from Russia, but said they found no terrorist connections. It brings up a lot of questions now...did they miss something? Here's an article about the investigation:

WASHINGTON — With one suspect dead and the other captured and lying grievously wounded in a hospital, the investigation into the Boston Marathon bombings turned on Saturday to questions about the men’s motives, and to the significance of an overseas trip one of them took last year.

Federal investigators are hurrying to review a visit that one of the suspected bombers made to Chechnya and Dagestan, predominantly Muslim republics in the north Caucasus region of Russia. Both have active militant separatist movements. Members of Congress expressed concern about the F.B.I.’s handling of a request from Russia before the trip to examine the man’s possible links to extremist groups in the region.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who died early Friday after a shootout with the police in Watertown, Mass., spent six months in Dagestan in 2012, and analysts said that sojourn might have marked a crucial step in his alleged path toward the bombings.

Kevin R. Brock, a former senior F.B.I. and counterterrorism official, said, “It’s a key thread for investigators and the intelligence community to pull on.”

The investigators began scrutinizing the events in the months and years before the fatal attack, as Boston began to feel like itself for the first time in nearly a week.

On Monday, the twin bombings near the finish line of the Boston Marathon killed three people and wounded more than 170. The tense days that followed culminated in Friday’s lockdown of the entire region as the police searched for Mr. Tsarnaev’s younger brother from suburban backyards to an Amtrak train bound for New York City.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, was taken into custody Friday night after he was found, bloody and weakened, hiding on a boat in a driveway in Watertown. He was still too wounded to speak on Saturday, said Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts. Special counterterrorism agents trained in interrogating high-value detainees were waiting to question him, according to a law enforcement official. An issue arose about the administration’s decision to question him for a period without giving him a Miranda warning, under an exception for questions about immediate threats to public safety.

The brothers’ motives are still unclear. Of Chechen heritage, they had lived in the United States for years, according to friends and relatives, and no direct ties have been publicly established with known Chechen terrorist or separatist groups. While Dzhokhar became a naturalized American citizen last year, Tamerlan was still seeking citizenship. Their father, Anzor, said Tamerlan had made last year’s trip to renew his Russian passport.

The significance of the trip was magnified late Friday when the F.B.I. disclosed in a statement that in 2011 “a foreign government” — now acknowledged by officials to be Russia — asked for information about Tamerlan. The request was “based on information that he was a follower of radical Islam and a strong believer, and that he had changed drastically since 2010 as he prepared to leave the United States for travel to the country’s region to join unspecified underground groups.”

The senior law enforcement official said the Russians feared he could be a risk, and “they had something on him and were concerned about him, and him traveling to their region.” Chechen extremists pose a greater threat to Russia than they do to the United States, counterterrorism specialists say, though some of the groups have had ties to Al Qaeda.

But the F.B.I. never followed up on Tamerlan once he returned, a senior law enforcement official acknowledged on Saturday, adding that its investigation did not turn up anything and it did not have the legal authority to keep tabs on him. Investigators are now scrambling to review that trip, and learn about any extremists who might have influenced, trained or directed Tamerlan while he was there.

President Obama and Republican lawmakers devoted their weekly broadcast addresses to the Boston attack, with both sides finding a common voice. Mr. Obama also met with his national security team for an update on the investigation.

“Americans refuse to be terrorized,” Mr. Obama said. “Ultimately, that’s what we’ll remember from this week.”

Since 1994, Russia and the United States have routinely exchanged requests for background information on residents traveling between the two countries on visa, criminal or terrorism issues.

The F.B.I. responded to the request in 2011 by checking “U.S. government databases and other information to look for such things as derogatory telephone communications, possible use of online sites associated with the promotion of radical activity, associations with other persons of interest, travel history and plans, and education history,” it said in a statement.

In January 2011, two counterterrorism agents from the bureau’s Boston field office interviewed Tamerlan and family members, a senior law enforcement official said on Saturday. According to the F.B.I.’s statement, “The F.B.I. did not find any terrorism activity, domestic or foreign,” and conveyed those findings to “the foreign government” by the summer of 2011.

Federal officials said on Saturday that the Department of Homeland Security, however, had decided not to grant a petition from Tamerlan for United States citizenship after officials found a record in his files that he had been interviewed by the F.B.I. His petition was held for further review.

As the law enforcement official put it, “We didn’t find anything on him that was derogatory.”

The Russian state news agency RIA Novosti quoted the father of the Tsarnaev brothers recalling the F.B.I.’s close questioning of his elder son, “two or three times.” He said they had told his son that the questioning “is prophylactic, so that no one sets off bombs on the streets of Boston.”

In an interview in Russia, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, the mother of the two men, said that the agents had told her that Tamerlan was “an excellent boy,” but “at the same time, they told me he is getting information from really extremist sites, and they are afraid of him.”

After Tamerlan’s visit to Dagestan and Chechnya, signs of alienation emerged. One month after he returned to the United States, a YouTube page that appeared to belong to him was created and featured multiple jihadist videos that he had endorsed in the past six months. One video featured the preaching of Abdul al-Hamid al-Juhani, an important ideologue in Chechnya; another focused on Feiz Mohammad, an extremist Salafi Lebanese preacher based in Australia. He also created a playlist of songs by a Russian musical artist, Timur Mucuraev, one of which promoted jihad, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors statements by jihadists.

The Boston bombings have led to increased cooperation between Washington and Moscow, a jarring shift coming amid weeks of rancor over American criticism of Russia’s human rights record. Presidents Obama and Vladimir V. Putin spoke by telephone late Friday night, in a conversation initiated by the Russian side, the Kremlin announced. The Kremlin’s statement said both leaders expressed “the building of close coordination between Russian and American intelligence services in the battle with global terrorism.”

Nevertheless, there were glaring questions about the case, among them how Tamerlan had escaped scrutiny.

A Russian intelligence official told the Interfax news service on Saturday that Russia had not been able to provide the United States with “operatively significant” information about the Tsarnaev brothers, “because the Tsarnaev brothers had not been living in Russia.”

Andrei Soldatov, an investigative journalist who specializes in Russia’s security services, said he believed that Tamerlan might have attracted the attention of Russian intelligence because of the video clips he had posted under his own name, some of which were included on a list of banned materials by the Federal Security Service, or F.S.B.

On Saturday morning, federal prosecutors were drafting a criminal complaint against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was wounded in the leg and neck.

An official said the criminal complaint would most likely include a constellation of charges stemming from both the bombings and the shooting, possibly including the use of weapons of mass destruction, an applicable charge for the detonation of a bomb. That charge, the official said, carries a maximum penalty of death. Though Massachusetts has outlawed the death penalty, federal law allows it.

The F.B.I. and local law enforcement agencies continued on Saturday to gather evidence recovered from the suspects’ home and the cars they used. Investigators found five pipe bombs and three grenades after the firefight Friday, and they were seeking to identify the origins of the explosives.

Agents fanned out to interview family members and others who knew the brothers to determine any motive, as well as clues about what or who radicalized them. Three Kazakh citizens who were acquainted with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev contacted the Kazakh Embassy in Washington, reporting that they had been questioned by the F.B.I. and asking for consular assistance, said Ilyas T. Omarov, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry of Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic. None of the three were held, he said.

Muslim leaders in many cities rushed to hold news conferences and preach sermons at mosques denouncing the bombing suspects, mourning the victims and praising the response of law enforcement and the community in Boston. They were eager to dissociate their faith from the Muslim suspects, and to head off a backlash against Muslims in the United States.

Anzor Tsarnaev and his younger son first came to the United States legally in April 2002 on 90-day tourist visas, federal law enforcement officials said. Once in this country, the father applied for political asylum, claiming he feared deadly persecution based on his ties to Chechnya. Dzhokhar, who was 8, applied for asylum under his father’s petition, the officials said.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev came to the United States later, and applied for American citizenship on Sept. 5 last year, federal law enforcement officials said.

pretty sad stuff, but at least they killed one and got the other ... was hoping the younger brother wouldn't make it, but seems like he is gonna make it ... still don't know how he got away from all those police for such a long period being wounded too ...